The Toyota Camry.
It just gets no respect.
Seen as even the more suburbanized colleague of the Honda Accord.
But that was yesterday.
Let's drive the formerly bland and appliance-like Toyota.
Camry, this one of' 15 XLE V6.
And check the tech and new reality.
Now if you buy one of these 15 Camrys, I can tell you, you're not going to be going on a.
The junkyard to get replace the body panel of a 14.
Every piece of sheet metal is curved and bent a little differently than the last year car, except for the roof, and if you look carefully they've given it kind of an adaptation of a Lexus spindle grill, but with a Toyota grill kind of grafted on top of it.
Now, inside the Camry's not quite as new, you'll notice that there's a much nicer center LCD helper screen by the way, Lexus quality now.
Here on the main screen, this carries over largely from past Camrys, a seven inch touch LCD with voice as well, but there's no other controller.
No big wheel to turn, click, and kick.
But it's very reachable and the buttons are large.
What's interesting are below here is something new.
That's a button I've not seen in a car before.
That is a Chi wireless charging button and this to the right is a wireless charging mat.
If you've got a phone that's either compatible like a Galaxy S6, or if you add 1 of these Chi wireless adaptors, it just hugs the back of the phone.
In fact, if you want to go, they even announced at the Mobile World Congress that IKEA's gonna build this technology into their furniture, so it seems as though a lot of industries are aggregating around this one.
Now, under the Apps button is where most of the magic of this system happens.
Notice they consider navigation to be.
Be an app, though it's not the kind of app you'd have on your phone, so a little interesting language there.
The Camry's navigation is find, but it's dated at this point, about the oldest thing in this dash.
It doesn't do online search itself.
You have to bounce out to Bing or Yelp or something else to do that.
And it's voice command is serviceable, but slow.
And in Toyota fashion, it locks out just about everything while you're moving.
And stabbing around its point of interest databases to find relevant things along your route, none of it's satisfying.
Traffic is provided in that nav system by the HD radio rig, so you're not having to have satellite radio activated even though this car comes with it standard.
Over here on the right, you get the more interesting apps.
You've got Bing, you've got Yelp, you've got OpenTable, and you got voice command of the nav system for POIs
[MUSIC]
Four different ways to, in many cases, get to the same result.
By then, I'll have used Google voice command on my phone.
As for media, you're not lacking any sources.
AM/FM, HD Radio, satellite, USB.
There's no hard drive to rip to, and that's totally fine by me.
Interesting trick, here.
If I'm listening to the radio, and I hit the voice command button to do something else for a moment.
Look what happens here.
It automatically paused and cached my radio broadcast so I can pick it up where I left off, or if I want, hit this button and it'll immediately go back to where it is live.
Slick.
Being a Camry, it's a simple car to drive.
No paddles, no fussy drive mode.
Hood button, PRND shifter, kick it left for sport mode.
And there you can also shift manually if you want.
Now under the hood of the Camry we've got the bigger of the two engines.
This is the 3.5 liter V6.
You can also get a 2.5 liter I4.
There's also a. Hybrid.
We'll talk about those some other time.
By the way, you guys are all tail draggers.
There's no all wheel drive on the Camry.
This current generation, as you probably know.
268 horse power come out of this guy.
248 pound beat of torque.
[MUSIC]
Now the weight is actually relatively svelte by modern standards.
Under 3,500 pounds for this v6 based car.
0 to 60 happens in, like, 5.7, 5.8.
That's actually pretty good, especially for a car that doesn't have performance as the lead attribute in its brand.
MPG 21/31.
I was getting in the high 20s in extended mixed driving, so everything seems to check out and almost surprisingly well.
Now I'm in sport mode and I'm getting on it right now, and this is a nicely programmed transmission.
It is taking the engine's power putting it to good use and making nice move shifts that aren't doughy.
We've got some very nice ride quality here without being [UNKNOWN].
The [UNKNOWN] on this car is really good, it's well done I mean everything is really easy to see.
There's almost no button or display that is obscured by the wheel or anything, which you'd be surprised how many cars do that.
Well, what I want to convey to you is that this is not a numb dough ball, like perhaps a previous Camry you've driven many years ago.
As for the driver assist, they all seem pretty well calibrated to me.
A blind spot tech is about right.
It doesn't early or late warn me about cars.
What they've done, they've basically, gotten to work well.
Okay, let's price our Camry.
It's basically top of the stack.
It's a V6 and XLE which is the top luxury tag.
But still we're in at just over 32 delivered, and there's not a whole lot to add to go CNet style.
Blind spot is 500 bucks.
Telematics they call SafetyConnect is 515.
The Tech Package is 750 for cross traffic alert, that pre collision sensing, adaptive cruise and lane departure warning.
And the Entune app suite with JBL upgraded audio an almost paltry 800 bucks.
All I can't even hit 35,000 on this car.
Top of the line.
Loaded up cnet style.
Now, a Camry with a V6 is not a sporting driver's delight, but it's also not a sporting driver's dread anymore.
I'd clean up that head unit, give it a whole new look and then I would take one of these all day long.
[MUSIC]
